By virtue of hav­ing qual­i­fied for the Hexag­o­nal Round of the FI­FA World Cup Qual­i­fiers Rus­sia 2018, T&T along with Cos­ta Ri­ca, Hon­duras, Mex­i­co, Pana­ma, and the Unit­ed States have earned the right to be seed­ed di­rect­ly in­to League A, and there­fore will not par­tic­i­pate in Na­tions League Qual­i­fy­ing.

This was dis­closed at CON­CA­CAF yes­ter­day and an­nounced with the de­tails and struc­ture of the Con­ca­caf Na­tions League, a new cen­tral­ized men’s na­tion­al team com­pe­ti­tion rep­re­sent­ing a new era of na­tion­al team foot­ball for Con­ca­caf Mem­ber As­so­ci­a­tions. The new for­mat with T&T be­ing seed­ed al­so means this coun­try has gained au­to­mat­ic qual­i­fi­ca­tion to the 2019 CON­CA­CAF Gold Cup.

The Con­ca­caf Na­tions League be­gins in Sep­tem­ber with a one-off qual­i­fy­ing phase, while the group phase, con­sist­ing of three tiered Leagues will kick off in 2019. The top League will end with a fi­nal to crown the Na­tions League cham­pi­on, and the com­pe­ti­tion will al­so serve to uni­fy the qual­i­fy­ing path for the re­gion’s na­tion­al teams to the new­ly ex­pand­ed Gold Cup.

The in­au­gur­al Con­ca­caf Na­tions League com­pe­ti­tion will be played in the of­fi­cial FI­FA match win­dows in Sep­tem­ber, Oc­to­ber and No­vem­ber, 2019 with a Fi­nal Cham­pi­onship to be played in March 2020.

All el­i­gi­ble Con­ca­caf Mem­ber As­so­ci­a­tions will be as­signed by sport­ing per­for­mance in­to three leagues: A, B and C.

League A of which T&T has been placed in, will con­tain four groups of three teams. The win­ners of each League A group will qual­i­fy to the Con­ca­caf Na­tions League Fi­nal Cham­pi­onship, which will de­ter­mine the cham­pi­on of the new com­pe­ti­tion. The teams at the bot­tom of each League A group will be rel­e­gat­ed to League B for the next edi­tion of the tour­na­ment.

T&T coach Den­nis Lawrence, in an im­me­di­ate re­ac­tion, spoke about this de­vel­op­ment. “It’s a mas­sive tour­na­ment and a very im­por­tant one of that for the re­gion and it is one I am sure every­one is very ex­cit­ed about. As for us a coun­try, it’s good that we are in­to League A as one of the teams which made it to the Hex," Lawrence said.

"It puts us in­to a po­si­tion where there’s a bit more time for plan­ning and prepa­ra­tion to en­sure we are ad­e­quate­ly ready for our first point of ac­tion in the com­pe­ti­tion and one which I am sure we will be ea­ger­ly await­ing and pre­pared to en­ter,” Lawrence told TTFA Me­dia. “It’s a great step for us and we’ll def­i­nite­ly be fo­cus­ing on mak­ing it all the way through and par­tic­i­pat­ing in the next Gold Cup es­pe­cial­ly as we missed out on the last com­pe­ti­tion,” he added.

Con­ca­caf Pres­i­dent Vic­tor Mon­tagliani said the com­pe­ti­tion will cre­ate greater op­por­tu­ni­ties for mem­ber as­so­ci­a­tions.

“The launch of the Con­ca­caf Na­tions League, con­ceived over the last two years and guid­ed by the ONE Con­ca­caf prin­ci­ples of uni­ty and ac­cess for our re­gion’s foot­ball, is the defin­ing mo­ment mark­ing the com­ple­tion of our tran­si­tion in­to a new era for our 41-mem­ber Con­ca­caf fam­i­ly,” said Mon­tagliani. “The Na­tions League as­sures that all our mem­bers will have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to play more and com­pete more, which in turn will pro­pel greater de­vel­op­ment of the sport at every lev­el.”